A Post-Oscars Examination of My Racism

I’m a white girl who’s watched the Oscars with her Mom for years. When Moonlight won best picture last Sunday I danced around the living room, relieved that a smart movie staring black characters had triumphed in a year fraught with racism and hate. I always root for minority actors and try to be an advocate for equality in all I do. So naturally, I didn’t think I was racist.

This past July, two police officers killed two black men in two days. I watched the footage of Philando Castile slumped in his driver’s seat, the black skin that cost him his life cut open and spilling warm, universal red onto the car upholstery.

The next day a black shooter killed five police officers. The summer air pulsed with the rage of a people being beaten black and blue; black skin, blue lights, black guns, blue uniforms. I watched it all from my TV screen. More than I felt my tears, I felt the paleness of the cheeks they ran down.

I wanted to join the crusade against prejudice. The problem: I am a privileged white person who doesn’t know the first thing about racism. I have never experienced it. I can never understand it. What defense could I build against it?

I decided to take Michael Jackson’s advice and start by looking in the mirror. I knew myself to be anti-racist, but I’d also heard about subconscious racism. I decided to dig into my psyche and wage an assault against the racism I may not be able to see.

I’m a writer by trade and identity, and at that time a new fairytale was forming in my head. At the center of the saga stood a character named Brenigale. I knew she shared my anxiety but surpassed my courage. She lived by the sea, but on the shore of a different world. Bren, as I called her in my head, began to take shape in the same way as most of my female protagonists: a white girl with red brown hair, just like me. But that could change.

I did away with my old image of Bren, and immediately discovered my imagination was a racist. When I started picturing Bren as a black girl, my brain’s rebellion horrified me. “No, no!” it seemed to be saying. “No! It doesn’t work like that!”

When I tried to fashion Bren in my brain, her face blurred. Much worse than that, I didn’t want to make her black. I wanted her to look like me. The prejudice poison tearing my country apart also existed in my creativity, and I hadn’t even noticed.

It wasn’t just me. I thought about the books I treasured, and how none of my favorite characters were black. In all the fantasy I’d ever read, I could only come up with three or four black characters period. Fiction was whitewashed.

I wouldn’t give up; I thought of Bren all the time. It took practice, but she fought her way onto my brain’s sketchpad. First a mass of black hair followed by long, thin hands and wide hips. She’s warm hearted and sharp witted. I gave her a little brother and a gift for words. Soon her face became easier to picture than my own.

The prejudice that fought Bren’s change in skin color is the same kind of prejudice that holds women and minority members back in the entertainment industry. One of the reasons it is so hard to fight is because laws can’t be passed to stop it. We can’t make it illegal to only nominate male directors or to not hire minority actors. Nor should we have to pass such laws. Those changes can only be made when individual people examine their conscious, find the prejudices there, and fight them.

I’m still a privileged white girl who has to actively combat her subconscious prejudice. But I think the Oscars serve as a reminder that while there is still much that needs to be done in government to combat racism, there is also a battle to fight in our own minds. I am not meant to be a hero in this story, but I hope that with vigilance and love I can keep myself from becoming part of the villain.

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